


A Lonely Cairn of Stones

by Artifiction



Category: Long-time Nuclear Waste Warning Messages, PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28531329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifiction/pseuds/Artifiction
Summary: "D’you think it’s true, that the gods were afraid the Old Ones would challenge them, so they rained fire on the Eastern Lands?"There are messages written on the walls of the Black City, for those who would stop and read them.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	A Lonely Cairn of Stones

> There was no sand in the Black City, no dust—nothing to show that centuries had passed since people lived there. The streets were hard, black and bare, shining in the sun. The alien buildings—beautifully and carefully carved—rose without break from the rock of the streets. If any tower was not part of the mass of rock beneath their feet, they did not find it. The city rose like a cluster of needles stabbing into the sky.
> 
> From Chapter 7 of Alanna, The First Adventure

* * *

They stood in the entrace for a long time, looking down along the streets. Alanna's hand brushed the wall at their back. The stone, if it _was_ stone, was smooth, and scalding from the noonday sun. Jon was the first to step forward out from under the shadow of the gate. He winced, and Alanna reached out, but he shook her off. "It's nothing. Just heat. No wonder they built Persopolis of white granite. With this dark stuff, you could bake bread just by dropping dough."

Alanna supposed she should have been glad her friend could keep his sense of humor even here, but the weight of the Black City grated on her. "We should go back. We shouldn't be here." Something itched on the back of her neck, a sense of wrongness. Everywhere she looked, the unbroken stone was carved with symbols. Some were pictures, others, inscrutable letters.

"You can go." Jon was already walking forward. "I'm going to look around some more."

Her hand settled on Lightning's reassuringly cool hilt. It seemed to hum against her skin. Ahead of her, Jon froze, and glanced around, searching. "Did you hear that?"

Alanna blinked. "Hear what?" Her feet carried her forward, and as she came level with him, she saw that he stood in front of a set of letters carved into the ground itself, the symbols each as large as dinner plates. The boot of her toe brushed the edge of one of the symbols.

The voice came like thunder in her mind.

**_THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR._ **

Jon looked at her, and she nodded. "I heard it." Curious, she took a step back, and then stepped forward again. The voice roared again in her ears.

**_THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR._ **

She raised an impressed eyebrow. "Some kind of magic? In case the writing was forgotten?"

The prince grinned. "Clever, isn't it? I wonder what the trick of it is, making so it speaks in our minds, and so it knows to speak to us in our own language. Maybe it's the language of the gods. I read that when a god speaks, all who hear them understand, even those who would not understand each other's tongues."

Frankly, Alanna thought it was more _disconcerting_ than clever, and her grip on Lightning tightened. She didn't like the idea that words written hundreds of years in the past could speak in her mind without permission.

Jon glanced at her, and she nodded. Together, they took a step forward, over the symbols.

The street they were on lead forward, among the towering buildings. There were no doors, no windows, no sign that the buildings were buildings in truth, not merely obelisks hewn by inhuman strength into forms that mimicked and mocked houses. Everywhere, the carvings decorated the walls. Some symbols repeated, others appeared only once.

Only a dozen paces later, they encountered another message carved into the ground. This time, it was two lines, carved one above the other. By unspoken consensus, they stepped on them together.

**_NOTHING VALUED IS HERE._ **

**_NO GREAT DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE._ **

Jon's lips twisted. "That much, I think I got from Ali Mukhtab. But I don't see any bodies, do you? No skeletons, no young Bazhir."

Alanna's skin was prickling more, now, and her stomach felt tight and knotted. "It feels _evil_ , Jon. I don't like it."

He nodded. "I'm glad we left the horses outside. I doubt they'd like it any more than you do."

Without the Black City around them, she might have stuck her tongue out at him. Instead, she just shook her head. They passed over more messages as they followed the twisting streets, getting close to the center. Some were single lines, others, a few gathered together.

**_WHAT IS HERE WAS DANGEROUS TO US._ **

**_WHAT IS HERE WAS REPULSIVE TO US._ **

They had to pass over that one twice after a dead end made them double back. The larger the message, the louder it sounded. Along one entire street, small symbols had been carved over and over, marching down its length, and as she and Jonathan walked down it, the voice babbled in their ear, _This message is a warning of danger, this message is a warning of danger, this message is a warning of danger._ That street culminated in a set of symbols so large, she could have lain down in the center of one of the circles without touching the edges.

**_THE DANGER INCREASES TOWARDS THE CENTER._ **

**_THE DANGER IS PRESENT IN YOUR TIME, AS IN OURS._ **

**_THE DANGER IS AN EMANATION OF POWER AND CAN KILL._ **

She was oddly relieved to find that even Jon was staring to look unsettled. His face was pale. Both of them were beaded with sweat from the pounding heat of the sun directly overhead. They passed over the last set of symbols, and turned a sharp corner.

Before them stretched the central square of the city. It was a vast expanse of stone as black as coal. It drank in the sun's heat with a boundless thirst. The air above it shimmered and wavered like a mirage, and beneath the shimmering air, repeating symbols were carved in a spiral that twisted inwards like thorny branches, towards a set of steps that descended into the stone itself.

**_THE CENTER OF THE DANGER IS HERE._ **

**_THE CENTER OF THE DANGER IS HERE._ **

**_THE CENTER OF THE DANGER IS HERE._ **

She stopped after the third, and reached out a hand for Jonathan, hoping he wasn't planning to cross the square, but he was already walking towards that descending staircase, his eyes gleaming with a strange light. Swallowing, she followed behind. "Jon, I really think..." Her voice felt small, choked by the heat and the dread in the pit of her stomach.

He glanced back. "We came all this way. I have to find out what's going on." They had reached the steps. They lead dowards into absolute blackness, a maw of dark stone. The spiral had ended several strides before the edge of the pit, leaving unmarred stone, but a last message stretched before them. She wasn't sure what made her do it, but she knelt down, and brushed her fingers across the symbols.

All the messages before had been cold and emotionless, a wall of sound that echoed in their minds, but this one felt different. In its tone, she thought she could almost her a plea, a request by the creators of this place that they turn back.

**_This place is best left shunned and undisturbed._ **

Taking a breath, she stood. Lightning was shivering in her grip. "Jonathan, I don't think we should go down there."

The prince was eyeing the first step, his foot overlapping the edge of the message. "I'm going to find out what's going on." He took a first step down, then another.

For a moment, Alanna hesitated, then followed. "You know I can't let you go by yourself," she snapped as they descended out of the sunlight into cooler darkness.

His voice echoed up to her from a dozen steps down. "Why did you think I asked Uncle to let you come?"

* * *

> “You planned this all along!” she accused.
> 
> “I hate mysteries. This place has been one for years. I knew you’d have the guts to come with me.”
> 
> “But—Gary, Alex, Raoul,” she protested. “They would’ve—”
> 
> “They would’ve grumbled all the way here and then knocked me over the head when I tried to enter the city. I knew you’d come and keep quiet.”
> 
> “That’s because I’m the only one with insanity in my family,” she grumbled.
> 
> From Chapter 7 of Alanna, The First Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by long-time nuclear waste warning messages, and rose out of the fact that one of the proposed designs to deter future people from approaching a nuclear waste storage facility was "Forbidding Blocks", best described by Wikipedia as:
> 
> "A network of hundreds of house-sized stone blocks, dyed black and arranged in an irregular square grid, suggesting a network of "streets" which feel ominous and lead nowhere. The blocks are intended to make a large area entirely unsuitable for farming or other future use."
> 
> I considered making this an Earth All Along trope — an earlier draft had mention of a 'three-petaled flower' design that was meant to be the radiation symbol — but I decided it was better to leave it ambiguous, change just enough that it could go either way, and see what comes out. I liked the result, and hope you do too.
> 
> If you want to learn more about Long-time nuclear waste warning messages, there's a fun wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages


End file.
